Tobias Kurzeder

What would the end of winter be without the Longboard Classic event in Stuben am Arlberg? And even if it was a bad winter, you can still give it a proper send-off – and the best way to do this is on 9 April 2011. Nobody does this traditional winter farewell better than the participants and organizers of the Longboard Classic, the self-proclaimed Woodstock of snowboarding.

The American brand Black Diamond has long been known for climbing equipment of all kinds as well as climbing skins, skis and ski boots. The tried and tested Ascension skin has been equipped with a new tip tensioner for this season and the material has been changed so that it is around 10% lighter than last year's model.

New avalanche transceivers: Several new and innovative avalanche transceivers are being released for winter 10/11. Chris Semmel and Florian Hellberg from the DAV's safety research department have put the new and revised avalanche transceivers through their paces and evaluated them. Here is a summary of the most important innovations and results?

Once again, the PG team has done a lot of gawking for you: cool flicks, dull flicks, terrific powder action and quirky iron scraping. In the PG Movie Corner you will find the screenings and film reviews of "Eye Trip", "Hello World", "Deeper", "The way I see it", "Revolver", "Out of the shadow", "As We Are", "F**** it, "The Storming", "TeleVision", "Respect Your Elders" and "Light the Wick". Of course including rating and ordering options.

I openly admit my critical attitude towards most winter sports films. Not that their action isn't awesome, the scenery isn't beautiful and the films aren't produced extremely professionally? What bothers me about most powder flicks is the banality of the plot and the naivety bordering on stupidity of many of the protagonists.

The Free Skiing textbook by Jimmy Oden, a Swedish full-time skier and mountain guide who has lived in Verbier, Switzerland, for many years, sets a new benchmark for mountain and especially alpine textbooks. Jimmy Oden's book is much better than all conventional touring and freeriding textbooks. This is not only because the design of most of these books is as appealing as the asphalt surface of a Swiss highway. No!, because this book impresses with its comprehensive, competent 336-page large-format content – and above all with its outstanding layout concept and design.

The new PowderGuide Freeride book: The 40 best freeride areas in the Alps on 328 pages packed with information and pictures: fantastic routes and descents of all levels of difficulty: From enjoyable deep snow skiing in the Bavarian foothills of the Alps to extreme freeride descents in the steep face mecca of Chamonix....

Many winter sports enthusiasts will remember the winter of 08/09 as being particularly snowy, whereas the previous winter of 09/10 was disappointingly snow-poor, especially in the otherwise snow-rich northern Alps. In the snowy winter of 2009, there was a series of avalanche accidents, particularly in the Bavarian Alps, with a high avalanche risk. In the current winter, which was characterized by an extremely unstable snow cover and therefore a precarious avalanche situation, an exceptionally high number of ski tourers were affected by fatal avalanche accidents, whereas there were an enormous number of avalanches in the freeride and off-piste areas, although the majority of these had a mild outcome. With 155 avalanche fatalities, the "bad winter 09/10" was extremely victimized?

Lush green meadows and colorful flowering bushes in the low altitudes of the Valtellina. But what a wonderful contrast to the horrible shades of yellow and green the high valley of Livigno offered us, kept in clear white. And just in time for our arrival, the sky opened up.

Panico Alpinverlag has reissued its Lechtal Alps ski touring guide: Dieter Elsner and Michael Seifert's Lechtal Alps ski touring guide is now in its sixth edition, making it a classic in the guidebook literature. The Lechtal Alps in the border region between Bavaria and Vorarlberg offer countless ski touring options for every taste: from long and lonely, to short and leisurely, to wild, airy summit action.

The Pieps 30° Plus, an electronic slope inclinometer including thermometer, is already available in stores. But it's only now that news about it and a short practical test have appeared on PowderGuide. The reason for this is that we only stumbled across this small, inconspicuous but very useful product at the Winter-ISPO 2010.

The Silvretta region includes parts of Vorarlberg and Tyrol as well as Graubünden in Switzerland. There are no large ski resorts, apart from Ischgl, which is why large and beautiful touring areas are available here for freeriders who want to climb. A number of legendary classics such as Piz Buin or Dreiländerspitze await freeriders and ski tourers here.